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Producer Riza Aziz (L-R) with cast members Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie and Jonah Hill, plus producer Joey McFarland, of The Wolf of Wall Street |
Long-term scandal watchers will recall that the Department of Justice (DoJ) claim last year sought, among other things, profits from the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, which was produced by Red Granite, a production company co-founded by Riza Aziz, the step-son of Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak.
In late June, US prosecutors broadened the range of assets they want to seize.
In addition to a huge yacht called Equanimity, Marlon Brando’s Oscar from On the Waterfront – which had since been given to Leonardo DiCaprio – and some diamonds that had been given to the model Miranda Kerr, the prosecutors now want the rights to Dumb and Dumber To, the Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels movie also produced by Red Granite.
Terrible
They’re also after the rights to the Will Ferrell film Daddy’s Home, though Euromoney takes the view that film should be the subject of a DoJ investigation of its own just for being truly terrible.
What’s next? Red Granite has also produced three other major-ish films that have yet to be named by the DoJ: Friends with Kids, starring Kristen Wiig; Out of the Furnace, starring Christian Bale; and Horns, starring Daniel Radcliffe.
Given sufficient time, most of Hollywood should eventually be dragged into the mix.
If it was fitting that with The Wolf of Wall Street, a film about financial crime, should turn out to be the subject of financial crime in its own right, what life-imitating-art-imitating-life lessons might we take from the latest films to be embroiled in the scandal?
Hopefully not too much, since Dumb and Dumber To revolves around one protagonist duping the other into believing he needs a kidney transplant.
To our knowledge, this hasn’t yet happened in the 1MDB case, but with all that has transpired, you wouldn’t be entirely surprised if it did.
